Amtrak workers serve notice
1989Mark Schneider 1989-07Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 8 →
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to bosses BOSTON-Amtrak workers staged informational picket lines in 26 cities on June 30 to put management on notice that the union ranks are prepared to strike if necessary. In a letter addressed to the public, a coalition of railroad unions placed the blame on management for creating a possible "shutdown [that] we don't want and you don't need."
Two contracts back, Amtrak workers were forced to "defer" a 12-percent wage hike over work an employee must do), and "reform" of the medical plan so that workers will now have to pay for this benefit.
Track workers organized in the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees face loss of jobs to scab contractors, sub-standard wages, and unsafe and unsanitary working conditions.
Over 250 rail workers in Boston picketed in front of South Station. Speakers included representatives from a wide range of rail unions, a striking Pittston miner from Virginia, and an Eastern Air Lines machinist.
Chinese student activists came to observe the picket. As one union president said, "We've got to show the administration that if union-busting is no good in Poland, and repression is no good in Beijing, it's no good here too!"
(Mark Schneider is a railroad clerk and member of TCU Local 1089.)
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Chinese students demonstrate in Minneapolis, Minn., on June 8 to protest massacre and crackdown. Lynn Henderson/Socialist Action context of China is very grave because the average income of an average peasant is extremely low.
In addition, all the evils of the market economy-all the anarchy of market forces— have been gradually reintroduced. I'll give you one example: In the county of Shangdung the